Avanade Reviews in Denver, CO Area

Pros

Avanade is a fantastic place to work for anyone who want to be at the pinnacle of technology. You will work with very good to great clients and work (for the most part) with the leading edge of Microsoft technologies. This is also one of the smartest group of people I have ever worked with. If you like to travel or want to build up frequent flier miles you can get more than you will ever use.

Cons

Work life balance is simply awful. You are on the road 100% for years at a time. If you are single, fresh out of school or an empty nester, then this can be ok for a bit, but it is not sustainable for most folks for a very long time.

Consulting is very sensative to economic ups and downs. When times are good, there is plenty of perks and communications from management, but when things go pear shaped. the communication goes down hill, both in quantity and quality.

Advice to Senior Management

Fix the work life balance issues. Even 50% travel would be sustainable for most of us. When the economy goes bad, employees know that consultants will be the first to go, so be up front and realistic with your communications. Employees have a right to plan for their future after all. Also, some visable sacrifices from management would make the inevitable lay offs go down easier.

Pros

There is a great set of training to take and opportunity to build your career particularly if you are focusing on local industries. Avanade has invested in both professional and some technical training for its consultants world wide. While there are some ways that Avanade could help to integrate the community feeling of actually working for a cohesive company, the variety that people bring to the company and the generally high quality of the employees make it a good place to work.

Cons

My manager is awful. Flat out awful. And there is no way to get help in resolving some of the issues without starting a big HR process.

Advice to Senior Management

Focus on technical training. Expand the budget for in person classes.

Pros

It's a great place to kickstart your career - there's lots of opportunity at Avanade for career growth. Employees get to work on a variety of projects, and management is willing to work with employees to find a reasonable balance between work and life. The benefits are phenomenal - health insurance provides great coverage for families at a decent price. Avanade also provides an amount of money to the employee on a yearly basis for purchasing items that improve your life, including books, gadgets, musical instruments, etc.

Cons

Travel is a big part of working for any software consultancy, and this is no different with Avanade. The pay is also slightly less than market, but is made up for in benefits.

Advice to Senior Management

None.

Pros

Avanade offers technical consultants a place where they can get direct access to the Microsoft technologies that they are intersted in. because the product set that Avanade works with is so diverse, it really doesnt matter what your specialization is, there will be a practice built up around that particular technology or product at Avanade. For many of our people, this means that they have the opportunity to build on thier technical set of skills while getting involved in engagements at the enterprise level. This kind of enterprise level experience is only available at a handful of companies in each area of the world.

Avanade was started by technical people for technical people. The unique relationship that the company has with both Accenture and Microsoft means that we tend to get a little bit of the best from both companies. We can sometimes take advantage of the Accenture network of benefits and employee purchase programs and still have the direct access to internal Microsoft teams and programs.

Cons

Avanade is definitely not for everyone. For many of our engineers, if you dont have a strong set of business in your home area, you really could be travelling 100% of the time. In my experience, the average travel rate is around 70% for our consultants. That comes down a little bit if you are working a "core services" role or if you area developer. Many of our development projects offer most of the developers the opportunity to work from home or work from a remote office. The senior developers, however, are usually on site for the customer.

The pay isnt great. Avanade likes to tout itself as offering pay in the 66th percentile for your job. I really dont know if that is the truth but I do get several interview offers a year for my same job and specialization and I know that they are offering well north of what I am making now. So far the comprehensive benefits and the MIcrosoft access have kept me at Avanade but some who are driven exclusively by money may find better opportunity at EMC or Dell.

The other thing is that you are completely responsible for your own career and that cuts both ways. It is your job to fight management if you want time for training or the opportunity to meet the requirements that you get certified.

Advice to Senior Management

In the present economic client, our sales people ahve to stop focusing on getting the big deals to meet thier quotas. Yeah, its great that we have been able to grow consistently at 30% a year since the company was founded. But in 2002-2003 when we last were in a tough market, we continued that growth on the back of a large number of smaller deals. In tough times, you focus on how you can save the client money and you focus on how little it is going to take to achieve that savings.

You focus on small projects that are quickly realized that have a quick cost savings. Trying to sell the 2- and 3- year ROI window multi-million dollar deal to boost your quota is going to result in a handful of big deals, meanwhile most of the consultants are unstaffed and the company's metrics go downt he tubes.

Go back to basics. Rememnber how the company was founded. Yeah, its good if we can get those bigger deals but we need to be doing a better job of taking advantage of the smaller opportunities, too.

Pros

Travel opportunities, new technology, gadget fund is good. Seattle office is nice, people in the organization seem to be honestly trying to help. Wide variety of customers and technologies. I feel like they will continue to try and help me grow in skills

Cons

Pathetic training, lost in the shuffle of everyone else. Everyone is waaaay too busy to honestly be able to help. Had many issues with technology and learning the company when I started. Wish I could have had someone from the company at least nearby that I could ask questions to instead of being alone at my house

Advice to Senior Management

Find better ways of training - not everyone learns in the same style. Try to help us grow to help you!

Pros

Very technology driven. They really support developers and their technical growth. I learned a lot in the 12 months I was there. There were some cool benefits, including a technical spending package of $2000/year on anything techie. Although this was back in 2005 so I'm not sure if they still have this.

They paid for my Microsoft Certification in full. I was really grateful for that.

Cons

I worked in the Denver office from 2004-2005. It was very frustrating being there. The pay was very substandard and the senior management played a "buddy" system with their church friends. They seemed to be the only ones that moved up.

As far as the corporation as a whole, I don't think it was as bad, but the Denver office really handled things poorly. It was very political.

Advice to Senior Management

Less politics. Pay your developers accordingly.